Information School News

The Department of Information Studies today welcomes John Spencer, Head of Operations at The Press Association , the national news agency, who is visiting selected University of Sheffield departments on a fact-finding tour, with a view to furthering collaborative research. The Press Association relocated a significant part of its operation from London to Howden in 2000, bringing capital investment to nearly £10m in Yorkshire and Humber. The project increased the number of PA employees in Howden from 100 -500 (ftes) and together with sites in Leeds and Wetherby now employs more than 800 people in the region. John is Chair of Howdenshire Forward, a member of Humber Forum and the Press Association's representative member of the Hull and and Humber Chamber of Commerce.

Peter Bath , Kendra Albright and Tony Norris organise the 12th International Symposium for Health Information Management Research, ISHIMR 2007, hosted by the University of Sheffield, 18th - 20th July 2007. Full information about the symposium can be found here: http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/ishimr07/index.html

Dr Kendra Albright is leading an IFLA FAIFE Workshop (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions Committee on Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression) on developing AIDS information materials , being held in Dubai 22-27 July.

Dr Val Gillet is also going to Lisbon, Portugal: she is speaking on "Deriving structure-activity relationships in heterogeneous datasets" in the Computers at the Frontiers of Organic Chemistry Symposium at the 7th National Meeting of Organic Chemistry, Portuguese Chemical Society http://www.dq.fct.unl.pt/7enqo/

On 12th July Michael Kasusse , Executive Director, Information Science Foundation of East Africa (ISFEA) & Librarian, Sir Albert Cook Medical Library, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda will give a talk Practicing Library and Information Work in Sub-Saharan Africa: Contributions to Regional Development by a University Library and a Professional Body. The talk will be at 11am, in room 204, 2nd floor, Regent Court.

Dr Val Gillet is teaching on a UNIDO training course on Molecular Design and Computer Assisted Combinatorial Chemistry in Trieste, Italy, this week.

Ana Cristina Vasconcelos , Miguel Nunes and Alex Peng will be at the the ECRM 2007 (European Conference on Research Methods in Business and Management), in Lisbon, 9-10 July. The following papers will be presented: Peng, G C A and Nunes, M B - Using PEST analysis as a tool for refining and focusing contexts for information systems research. Vasconcelos, A C - The use of Grounded Theory and of Arenas/Social Worlds Theory in a discourse study.

Dr Miguel Nunes is in Lisbon, Portugal, over the next couple of the weeks. His activities include lecturing on a PhD Summer School on Computer Science and Information Systems, Chairing the IADIS e-Learning conference on the 6-8th July and Chairing the 6th European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies on the 9-10th July.

Several staff participated at the Umbrella conference last week, held at the University of Hertfordshire and organised by the Chartered Instititute of Library and Information Professionals. Professor Sheila Corrall spoke on "IT governance", Dr Paul Clough and Dr Simon Tucker on "Trends in multimedia retrieval" and Dr Philippa Levy on "Theories of Change" as an approach to evaluating educational projects. Paul Clough and Dr Andrew Cox also produced a poster which identified "Web 2.0" research activities inthe Department, whilst Sheila Webber presented a poster outlining a "Map of Information Literacy Research".